Background Radiation
by Eponymous Rose
Summary: There's a moment to breathe after the detonation, but no time to mourn their losses. Vanessa Kimball faces up to the future, to what's been left behind in the rubble. Carolina knows a thing or two about moving forward.


Her head is down when the blast hits; when the capital city of Chorus is vaporized, she isn't watching, isn't witnessing. She's running a gloved thumbnail along the imperfect, chipped plating on the safety restraints holding her in place.

The Pelican rocks and bucks violently in the shockwave. Everyone clings grimly to a held-breath silence, apart from the muffled impacts of armor against padded bulkheads, a whimpered " _ow_ " from Captain Grif, and the clatter of a body hitting the hull plating above them. The shockwave passes. The ship puts down with a bone-rattling crunch.

And then Captain Tucker is crouched in front of her, his helmet under his arm so she can see his face. His eyes are narrowed, brow furrowed in a frown. "Hey," he says. He spends a moment in a plainly visible hunt for words, and when he comes up empty, he only shrugs, one hand palm-up, what-can-you-do?

Vanessa exhales and tips her head forward, feels the weight of it at the base of her neck. "Yeah."

To her left, the door of the hold is open to the air; they've landed somewhere in the unsettled zones surrounding the capital, verdant and lush and empty. Wash and Sarge are outside, gently laying a limp body down in the tall grasses. To her right, the rest of the Reds and Blues are huddled in their seats, most still clutching at their restraints, muted and awed.

Kimball thumbs the release for her restraints, takes Tucker's offered hand and pulls herself to her feet. Her legs are shaky underneath her, loose and wobbling at the joints. "I just need some air," she tells him, and stumbles out into the world.

The second-sun brightness of the explosion has, of course, already passed, so it takes her a moment of disoriented turning in place to find the direction of the capital. When she does, she feels her joints lock, leaving her stunned and rooted in the face of a distant, mountain-high mushroom cloud, punching deep into the stratosphere and spreading like the anvil of a late-summer thunderstorm.

She thinks, for no reason at all, of sitting next to then-Private Katie Jensen on just such a late-summer night, in the middle of an interminable recon assignment at a minor Fed outpost. In the oppressive, humid heat, they'd been swapping sips of cool water flavored with Katie's smuggled supply of sugar and her own sacrifice of her personal ration of dehydrated fruit. The lightning in the distance had been a spectacular distraction from their records of troop movements.

Katie had told her, amid flashes of light and sips of the syrupy liquid, about growing up in the capital, about Armonia. About the first building based on the style adopted by the colony's young architects, the first landmark that hadn't been some modular utilitarian prefab structure: the opera house, ornate and complex, designed with a giddy gaudiness that had spoken to the reckless enthusiasm of Chorus's New Age.

Now Vanessa pictures the shockwave striking the spiralling pavilions and soaring arches, the forward-and-back slosh of destruction like wind in a field of wheat. She pictures the architecture of a human body decaying in the face of the blast, the curtainwalls of skin and muscle torn away, the supporting columns of bone crumbling to dust.

She barely has time to pull off her helmet before she vomits into the grass.

When she's done emptying her stomach, dry-heaving until reactive tears course down her cheeks, she scrubs the back of one shaking hand against her mouth and straightens up, gasping.

Behind her, Epsilon says, in a glitching, stop-motion voice, "Sh-sh-she'll be okay. Healing unit is ac-ac-active."

"Carolina," says Wash, softly.

Vanessa turns, walks back to them. The ache of her emptied stomach feels, paradoxically, like a solid weight in her body, anchoring her. Carolina is flat on her back in the grass, her helmet beside her, head lolling to one side. Her armor is smoking faintly, and blood is running from her nose down the side of her face, into the grass beneath her. Epsilon is a flickering, pixelated glimmer of light above her, keeping up a steady stream of cursing under his breath. Wash is crouched next to them, Sarge standing awkwardly a few paces away, silent sentry.

There are, Vanessa notices, burns rising just under the armor's bodysuit on Carolina's throat, thin welts following the suit's hidden circuitry all the way down. "P-p-pushed it too far," Epsilon says, maybe catching her scrutiny. "I couldn't k-k-keep up." He flickers again. "Gotta reroute power. Fuck," he says, eloquently, and vanishes.

Vanessa remembers the dull thump of Carolina's body hitting the Pelican's hull, feels her guts twist again, painfully. "Hey," she says, crouching down beside Wash. "She did it."

Wash snorts. "Needlessly dramatic as always," he says, and taps a hand a little nervously against Carolina's shoulder pauldron. "I didn't even see her leave the Pelican. She shouldn't have taken that risk."

"Wasn't exactly being subtle," Carolina rasps, without opening her eyes. "Had to get us out of there. Worked, didn't it?"

Wash doesn't reply, only pats her again on the shoulder and gets up, making his way back to the Pelican in short, sharp strides, with Sarge in tow. Vanessa thinks she understands the silent anger that's set in his shoulders. She thinks she understands a lot better now.

Carolina opens her eyes, sucks in an obstructed breath, and coughs, scrubbing at the blood on her face, pushing herself to a sitting position. She stares at Vanessa a moment, eye-to-eye. Vanessa hasn't ever been this close to either of the Freelancers without their helmets; she's startled at the bright, unnatural green of Carolina's eyes. Gene mods, she thinks. No wonder.

She's too tired, maybe, too mired in bone-deep exhaustion to feel embarrassed at staring. Whatever the reason, Carolina looks away first. She tugs off one of her gloves with a wince and holds her hand up to the sunlight, looking at the thin burn-lines running down the back of her hand to her wrist. "Same thing happened to a friend of mine when he tried something similar," she says, softly. "Only he did it without an AI or a healing unit, with bullets in his chest. I was pretty sure it would work better for me."

Her calm tone casts the conversation into an almost nightmarishly surreal light. Vanessa wants to respond in kind, but her voice is fraying at the edges. "I think you scared Wash."

Carolina presses her bare hand into the grass, winces. "We didn't exactly have any other options. Besides, Wash knows he could keep you all safe without me, if it came to that."

"He wouldn't want to," Vanessa says, a little louder than intended. She closes her mouth with a snap. The lingering burn in her throat rasps as she swallows; she brushes a couple tears from her eyes.

Carolina tilts her head to one side, her lips pressed into a thin line. Then she says, "But he could."

Vanessa rubs her face, pushes herself to her feet, and cautiously offers Carolina a hand up, but the other woman has finally noticed the mushroom cloud on the horizon and is staring, transfixed. "You don't see those in populated areas anymore," Carolina says. "Not in the same way. It's like something out of a history book."

"I don't know that all of our people made it out alive," Vanessa says, forcing the words out past the lump in her throat. "I mean, I know not everybody made it..."

When she trails off, Carolina snaps out of her reverie and grabs Vanessa's hand with a force and lack of hesitation that belies the pain her burns must be causing her. She hauls herself to her feet, and when they're both standing Vanessa realizes, for the first time, how much smaller Carolina is.

Carolina says, "You don't have time for a pity party."

Vanessa, who still has Carolina's hand clutched in hers, clenches it spasmodically, then notices the wince on Carolina's face and pulls away. "Sorry," she says. "I know. We don't have time for anything." Then she says, in the same conversational tone of voice, "It should have been me."

Before Carolina can reply, Simmons comes jogging up behind them, snaps to awkward attention when they turn to look at him. "Um," he says, glancing from one to the other.

Carolina sighs. "Let me guess. Bad news?"

His shoulders slump, and he says, "We just heard back from some of the evac parties. They report seeing the UNSC _Tartarus_ breaking atmosphere."

A full five seconds of silence, then Vanessa says, "Felix and Locus made it out."

"I," says Simmons, and swallows audibly. "Maybe. Yeah. Probably."

"They made it out," Vanessa says, slowly, "and now they have the sword."

Even in full armor, Simmons' flinch is visible. "I, uh. I have to check some... readings..." he says, and dashes back to the Pelican.

Carolina is looking at her. This time, Vanessa looks away first. She's breathing slow, steady. She feels clearheaded for the first time in weeks. She unclips her rifle from her side, feels the solid weight of it in her hands, and turns back toward the Pelican.

"Where are you going?" Carolina says, softly.

"To open communications with the _Tartarus_ ," Vanessa says. "To negotiate my surrender. Mine, personally. Felix is a sadistic bastard, first and foremost. He won't be able to resist."

"He'll kill you," Carolina says, "and then he'll move on to the rest of the planet."

Vanessa shrugs, mirroring Tucker's stance from earlier, what-can-you-do? "Then I'll die. I'm willing to take that chance."

Carolina is quiet for a moment, then says, "I know you are. But pulling a pin in your own grenade just so you'll have something to throw yourself on heroically? That isn't the answer. Believe me, I know."

Startled, Vanessa glances back to see that Carolina's looking out toward the city again, rubbing one arm, her brow furrowed. She says, "My father was a scientist."

"I don't understand."

"Most of what he tried to teach me wasn't worth knowing," Carolina says. She inhales, exhales, slowly. Vanessa catches herself breathing in the same rhythm. "He was always working, especially after Mom died. But he did tell me one thing worth remembering. He told me that science only works through failure. That even if you do something wrong, something completely bone-headed, you should share it with everyone else so they can learn from your mistakes, so the science as a whole can move forward. No matter how embarrassing it might be to you, personally, no matter how much it makes you want to crawl in a hole and die, you have a responsibility, an _obligation_ , to let everyone else know where the tripwires are."

"So," Vanessa says.

"So." Carolina shrugs, smiling faintly. "This is me, offering to let you know where the tripwires are. Don't sacrifice yourself because it seems like the only way out. It doesn't work. Trust me. It doesn't. Doyle died because it was the only way he could see to move us all forward. You have better options."

Vanessa breathes, slow and heavy. Clips the rifle back to her armor and presses her hands to her face, then lets them drop and wraps her arms around herself, hugging tight against a sudden chill. "If I do have better options, I don't see them. I really, really don't see them."

Carolina moves closer, grips Vanessa's arm where she'd grabbed her before, standing in the streets of Armonia for the last time. "Then I'll just have to help you map out the minefield."

Vanessa feels something shear inside her, a splintering under pressure that cuts through the ache in her chest. She doesn't cry, not really, just lets out a little gasping sob and stops at that, hugging herself, and feels Carolina's hand travel from her arm to the back of her neck, a slow, reassuring motion. Carolina's bare fingers rest over the vertebrae, and for the first time Vanessa remembers seeing a sunburst of scar tissue in the same spot on Carolina's neck, remembers asking Tucker about it, remembers piecing together the whole terrifying story. Now Carolina's fingers are tracing, unconsciously, the same pattern across the back of Vanessa's neck, right where her own AI port would have been. Vanessa exhales, slow and steady, and relaxes under the touch until Carolina pulls away.

"Okay," Carolina says, and bends down to scoop up her helmet and glove, starts walking back to the Pelican. Vanessa trails in her wake. "Surely Lopez has repaired this thing by now. Let's get back to the rest of the evacuees. They'll want to see your face, want to know you made it through that. We took out almost all of Charon's forces. We've got Felix and Locus on the run. Doyle helped make this happen. You helped make this happen by permitting him to do that. Nobody can doubt that what happened today was an act of cooperation."

Vanessa says, softly, "It's all gone, but we can build it again." She's thinking of the opera house. She's thinking of the fragile architecture of the human body. "We can survive."

Carolina hops up into the Pelican, turns to offer her hand. "Ready?"

Instead of taking her hand, Vanessa stumbles to a stop. "Are you ever scared?" she blurts out. Behind Carolina, the others freeze and go silent, listening intently.

But Carolina doesn't hesitate, only grins. "All the time."

Vanessa sighs relief, takes Carolina's hand and swings herself aboard. "I think that's okay," she says, settling back into her seat, pulling the safety harness down over her shoulders. "I think that's important. I think that's maybe the most important thing."

Carolina takes the seat next to her, slaps her amiably on the shoulder. "Then I think we're gonna be fine. It's a start."

Vanessa breathes slow and steady, feels the imperfect, chipped plating of the safety restraint under her hand, but doesn't look down, watches instead as the Pelican door closes on the bright, sunny world outside. "It's a start," she says, and the roar of the engine drowns out her last lingering doubts.


End file.
